Canned Combat: CombatWords! Incantation March 27, 2010

CombatWords! Incantation March 27, 2010
The salesmen preach of amity
While practicing their enmity;
And put at odds, by market force
I seek to free the primal source
That's locked inside a game of Noh:
A friend is less than worthy foe.

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Alphainventions: jmblackstock.wordpress.com defended his honor! Canned Jihad, March 25 2010

From http://jmblackstock.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/moments/#comments

I wrote comments at this horrible site yesterday and the dude chickened-out. Yet, the jackass promotes his site on alphainventions. This is exactly the kind of asinine crap I envisioned battling w/ combatwords. Well if chickenmeister is going to hide the comments on his blog, I'm just going to have to post them here, so everybody can see how chicken he is.

He wants an audience, so he treasures his honor, but he won't fight for it? Cannedcombat should do one on empty vanity next. Anyhow, here's the thread:

"9 Responses to “Moments”

1.
Lily Saurez Says:
March 24, 2010 at 7:39 pm

I really enjoyed this. Thank you.

-LS

http://lilysaurez.wordpress.com
Reply
*
Justin Says:
March 24, 2010 at 7:41 pm

The pleasure is all mine :)
Thank you for reading!
Reply
2.
william Says:
March 24, 2010 at 8:37 pm

howdy Justin william here from the rally, loved this, u are a good writer, please pop over and read one of mine, hope to become friends :)
Reply
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Justin Says:
March 24, 2010 at 8:40 pm

Thank you very much, William :)
Your kind words mean a great deal to me.
I’ll surely be reading your work, post haste ^_^
Reply
3.
Thursday Poets’ Rally Week 11 (March 24-30, 2010) « Jingle Says:
March 24, 2010 at 9:23 pm

[...] http://jmblackstock.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/moments/ [...]
Reply
4.
Khakjaan Wessington Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 25, 2010 at 2:27 am

Repeats itself again and again. What’s the point? You’ve committed a felony against the muses.
Reply
5.
Khakjaan Wessington Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 25, 2010 at 2:29 am

And are you going to be chicken and delete that comment? I think if you want to defend your ‘honor’ you should draw your keyboard and meet me at dawn. Combatwords.blogspot.com would be an obvious choice, but if you’re afraid to duel in a place that allows backlinks, I understand. Cowardice is a common trait.
Reply
6.
suzicate Says:
March 25, 2010 at 6:30 am

“just time enough to breath:
: – my favorite line. This is a beautiful poem. I like it a lot.
Reply
7.
mairmusic Says:
March 25, 2010 at 7:24 am

Your words have a sense of urgency yet pulling back– perfect for conveying this feeling. And we do all feel like this; writing is such a help.
Reply
8.
justmeshakira Says:
March 25, 2010 at 7:47 am

I really enjoyed this , excellent poem, love your moments, so tender and lingering. hugs, shakira
Reply
9.
dustus Says:
March 25, 2010 at 7:47 am

Enjoyed, especially…

“For one brief moment
Let me stop all of it
Let me put it aside and
Try to remember how to smile”

Definitely can relate to this poem. Nice work
Reply
10.
Khakjaan Wessington Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 25, 2010 at 4:22 pm

Someone’s chicken! I knew it. Couldn’t take the truth?

Repeat: you repeat yourself (heh) and end in the same place you started. Each stanza is anchored with a cliche or just redundant. Oh, you think you’re so clever in ’stretching out the moment’ when all you do is add static to the poetic discourse.

CC: Combatwords : Challenge: rewrite this horrible poem. Try to stay as ‘true’ to the intention of the ‘poet’ as possible. Try to only use the vocab that appears in the poem.

ps: I saw you checked out toylit–what, afraid to throw down? You want to promote via alphainventions, but you don’t want the negative attention?
Reply"

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New Feature: CannedJihad!

I am trying to tone down my extremist ways re: literature, but I admit, it's damned difficult. Really, what am I supposed to say to this? http://poemblaze.wordpress.com

It's not like I can unsee it. It's not like I can reach into my brain and remove the words. I know, you're asking "why don't you just leave the poor fucker alone?" Oh, I guess we could, but if you're on CombatWords! it's partially because you too believe that conflict builds strength.

Here. Okay. I'm going to make this fair. If I'm going to feature a twaddle-peddler, then I should also feature someone with some lit ability, right? Okay. So to make it fair, here's someone who's not such an easy target: http://godlessmonkey.wordpress.com/

I don't think he's a bad writer, but he has yet to impress me. Anyhow, for now, CannedJihad! will feature writers of varying strength. Top 'em. That's the trick. Outwrite 'em. I was lazy earlier today and should have just out-written the poemblaze guy, but what can I say? Sometimes I'm antagonistic. It's why I curate CombatWords! after all.

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Canned Combat March 23, 2010: Health Care

What is health and how do we care for it? Why the fuck is it that two thousand years after Hippocrates and the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, we still don't have a sound notion of health? Or maybe you think we do. But I don't want cheap notions and opinions: this is CombatWords! and demands rigor and aggression.

If you post first and nobody else comes to play w/ you, I'll make sure I post something. If you're feeling nervous, why not consider attacking the subject of the upcoming 'CannedJihad!' (sounds so much better, don't you think?) Still, there are so many angles with which one can approach health: why not try?

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Fine, I see this isn't working as well as the old format

I'll go back to frequently updating canned combat. I'll also add a new feature: 'Combat Targets.' The idea behind Combat Targets is simple: why wait for the fight to go to you, when there are billions of pages out there just begging for readers.

True, they want 'positive readers,' but fuck what they want. They wanted an interactive experience, let's give it to them.

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Arr! Time for TIMED Canned Combat March 20-etc

Okay, I've let you all throw down here in a very loose, lazy way. But now CombatWords! is ready for some additional rules--to make it interesting. Engagements should have time limits. I'll start you all off easy: time expires 24 hours after the last post in a thread. Winner is declared by critique and audience vote.

Right now, I'll keep the topic open. The main rule is to riff off the prior post. Oneupsmanship should form the bulk of the combat here, though the audience is encouraged to be as harsh as the compositions warrant. I mean, you can totally jeer at bad writing if you want to, but don't scare off your sparring partners, okay?

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Example of the sad sorry crap people are posting online

This dolt strolls onto craigslist litfo shilling his hackery:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/forums/?ID=153942260

I can't stand this sort of brazen, no-talent cyber-clutterer. He's the word equivalent of prescription-meds spam.

He wants attention? Let's give him attention. I already started there, to bait the cretin. Let's see if he has the balls to be brazen when the internet talks back to him:

http://www.deathofrhett.blogspot.com (copy and paste, he'll get no link from me)

I couldn't even make it through more than a few paragraphs at a time. A man ought to be able to read and keep his lunch you know.

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Aliens and Angels Canned Combat, March 15-etc

UFOs are the new flaming, golden chariots, while the grays are replacements for God's little helpers (bearing a bizarre symbolic resemblance to Santa-Elves). Is space flight the new Tower of Babel? I sometimes think that industrial civilization uses space travel as a justification for its existence. "Nukes and global warming are okay. You'll retire on the moon." I see space colonization as symbolically related to heaven and apocalypse. Heaven turns out to be hell. And hell turns out to be Earth. And Earth was a cannibal-Eden, before we turned it into a giant farm.

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Long Live the New Flesh

I've always loved that phrase. Free-associate.

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Canned Combat March 9, 2010 - March 14: Hive

Regular readers of Toylit know that I am obsessed with the human-hive. Most self-other interactions involve tool-relationships. When manipulating inanimate plastic or wood, it's easy to see the tool-relationship. When befriending someone, or pledging allegiance to an organization (or even symbol), the tool relationships become more confusing. And yet, from these relationships, organizations arise. Invisible hands: entities that are comprised of humans and yet inhuman in nature. Organizations of any type can easily pass a Turing Test because they are COMPRISED of humans--bonded together by tools, systems and loyalties. Organizations, I argue, ARE AIs. The computerized AI, independent of humans, will never be as effective as a hive-AI. If anything, computerized AIs simply promise to be new components we insert into our composite-machine of a hive. So these AIs are molecules, with people--and increasingly computers--as discrete components.

A human is defined by tool-relationships, enhanced by them; and yet also constrained by them. Today's sociopathic killer was once Rome's finest General. What was once an essential white blood cell has withered away to an appendix. Times change, the hive changes. Hives compete, not only in war, but also in resource production and distribution. Banking can kill people as well as nukes can, as the Russians learned in the 90s. Ideas, like specific visions of law, can be so compelling that they become the highest allegiance an individual has, thus bypassing religion, state and sometimes even family.

I offer this thesis, that you might become unbounded by conventional visions of human and write something that scares you. If you are repelled by the thesis, then strike back with words in any form. Stab it in the heart if you can.

CombatWords! Engage.

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Canned Combat Format Change

Too often there's no combat, and then a flurry of combat. I had envisioned a daily combat involving swarms of warriors. Until that day arrives, the format must change: instead of daily canned combat, it will now be weekly.

Prepare for this week's canned combat topic.

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March 7, 2010 Canned Combat: Mysterious Processes

The info age lends itself to positioning the self as a knower, yet we live in an age of ignorance. It's why we thirst for info, to clarify the confusing. We ignore the mysterious processes--of how a cocktail party conspires against you. Which faux pas was the Rubicon? Ah or the rhythms of nature; the tempo of flies and their relationship to zooplanktons. I am especially guilty of proclaiming my knowledge, but my ignorance will always be vaster. Therefore we must write loving missives to ignorance and mystery for today's canned combat.

Use your knowledge of language to revel in your ignorance. Be Byron's grandiose foil.

Arr! CombatWords!

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March 5, 2010: Hooray for Dystopia!

Ah, LA. A gigantic machine. A really fun hell. Mechanical mice and backrooms with dice. Wargamer's delight in the virgin night. Everything's for sale and all products fail in the land of El Lay, where warm days are gray. When they're not busy being the end of civilization, they enjoy the fruits of their labor. LA is America's Potemkin shopping mall. In San Francisco, we just make imaginary things for sale, but in LA they sell the sale. And yet this citadel of fraud inspires our rightful awe.

Dystopia's hilarious. CombatWords! Engage...

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Canned Combat, March 2, 2010: Greed

Greed takes any form. It is an unbalanced sense of self--that in possession, we might become the things we own. Is this a true proposition? I think it might be--after all, what am I without my pen? Without my keyboard? Without paper? Without my health? Is greed a basic state, or is there something fundamentally unbalanced in the trait? And if so, where is the dividing line? Have at it.

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Canned Combat: March 1, 2010: Interspecies Communication

Mix and match with the unrealized themes below.

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I noticed a shortage of combatants for stumbleupon

So what are the proposed alternatives?

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